Just been browsing the Oyster Band's (or Oysterband, as they now like to be known) website, and your 20 Golden Tie Slackeners is listed there, Philip.
They are doing a 25th anniversary tour in early December, and I believe at the London gig at the Forum there might be a few ex-members doing a turn (this is not on the website but is a rumour I picked up from someone who we have all heard of!) The discography part of the website has a section for various members' work outside the Oysters, which includes all the Aeroplanes stuff, but not the Langley / Kearey album for some reason. I'd e-mail them to let them know, but its not a album I own so I would be sketchy with the details.
Disturbingly, it also lets on that Fiddlers Dram actually issued 3 more singles after Day Trip to Bangor (Top of the Pops appearance going to their heads?), which must have totally bombed as they aren't in my Guinness Book of Hit Singles.
The website is a www.oysterband.co.uk if anyone is interested. I've seen them a few times and they are invariably good live. One gig at the Hub in Bath particularly sticks in the mind, probably mid 90's, as it was so packed and band was really on form, and I danced so much I came out completely drenched in sweat!
PV1
From: philip_rush@ye...fsnet.co.uk
Reply-To: blueplanes@st...net
To: blueplanes@st...net
Subject: Re: Re: [Blueplanes] more music biog
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 22:02:31 +0100 (CET)
Around that time I played fiddle with the Oyster Band - or most of them,I don't
remember John Jones being there - who were very friendly chaps. This was at a
New Year's Eve party in Rodborough. I got the impression that the whole hit single
thing was rather an embarrassment, which, to be fair, the Oyster Band weren't. They
were from Kent of course, well of course because of the oysters, and I never really
knew why Ian Kearey gave it up and how he got to be a part of the Blue Aeroplanes.
That's my story.
They made a great album called Twenty Tie Slackeners or something with loads of
the tunes we all used to play around that time; very rough and effective, with no
vocals, and I have no idea where my copy actually is.
Philip
Message date : Oct 31 2003, 07:42 PM
> From : Paul Vallis
> To : blueplanes@st...net
> Copy to :
> Subject : Re: [Blueplanes] more music biog
>
>
I think most, if not all of the Oyster Band, which Kearey was a member
of for a long time (and they are still going in his absence) actually played
on it. If memory serves the singer was one Cathy LeSurf, who had been in the
Albion Band for a while. I saw here appear as a guest at a couple of&
nbsp;Fairport Convention's Cropredy Festivals back in the 80's, doing the guest-
female-singer-to-sing-some-of-Sandy-Denny's-songs spot. Luckily for me, and
probably everybody else there, they didn't play it.
>
"Awful folk nonsense" is one of the kindest things I've ever heard said about
that record. It was truly dreadful, and probably ensured that the UK would
probably have to wait another generation for a folk revival to happen. Quite
how it actually got to number 3 in the charts, which is higher than virtually any other
"folk" single I can bring to mind (unless you count Mull of Kintyre as a folk song, oh,
and Ralph McTell's Streets of London, and Peter, Paul and Mary - actually there are
a few, but I think that the argument still just about holds up!), is a mystery we could
discuss for ages. But probably can't be ars*d.
>
